The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

Following an apparent attempt to intimidate the lawyer and sister of Dmytro Reva, one of the defendants in the controversial Dnipropetrovsk bomb trial, an activist from the civic organization GRAD has had a Molotov cocktail thrown at his door.

Andriy Denysenko is convinced that the incendiary device thrown at the GRAD office which is also the home of his mother and 83-year-old grandmother was connected with his active work aimed at obtaining the release from custody of Dmytro Reva. The attack occurred at around 20.45, and it is lucky that the neighbours heard the bang and reacted in time, extinguishing the flames in time.

Denysenko stresses that this is the address under which GRAD, which he is the head of, is registered. He is convinced that the attack is connected with the campaign which GRAD has been involved with over the last year to secure the release of Dmytro Reva who has spent 16 months in detention, charged without any justification with abetting those who allegedly planted four bombs in Dnipropetrovsk on 27 April 2012.

As reported, Reva is charged with aiding and abetting terrorists. More specifically – and bafflingly – he is accused of having gone to the centre of Dnipropetrovsk on the day of the blasts in order to “observe the reaction of the police and public to the explosions, and if necessary pass on information to Sukachev and Fedoryak, so that the latter could coordinate their further actions”.

The absurdity of these charges has been spelled out on many occasions. The bombs had been planted at least an hour before Reva set off for the centre and what he could have observed to make “further actions” necessary and what such actions could have been is entirely unfathomable. Explosives experts have confirmed that the chemical detonators could have triggered at any time and in any order making it entirely unforeseeable how many – if any – explosions he would witness (in fact, he was in the vicinity of two of the four).

Even were the charges not so bafflingly senseless, the key problem would still remain. The charges contain no elements of a crime. This has been confirmed by a leading criminal law expert.

Nor is there any other evidence against Dmytro Reva. There s only an exchange of text messages with one of the other defendants, with whom he studied at university and with whom he later worked as part-time consultants for an opposition MP. Reva is asked if he and “our lot” are OK and replies that as far as he knows they are. The exchange is not only credible given the bomb blasts in the centre and the fact that the two men have common friends from university, but was also similar to other messages which the other defendant sent that day.